Redevelopment of Britannia park that could
affect our access to the water/ice: Thursday February 27th

See below for info about the 1st plan they
submitted for comment. Here is the invite:

After receiving
feedback from residents, user groups, and community partners at
consultations and a previous open house meeting, I directed City
staff to design plans for the exterior of Britannia Park. This open
house will focus on these updated designs and first phase of the
renewal of the Ron Kolbus Lakeside Centre. We will be sharing with
you plans for parking, signage and
other amenities.

The Ron Kolbus Lakeside Centre building
itself, will be addressed at future meetings and
consultations.

Due to cuts to the
Ontario government’s budget that had a significant impact on Ontario
parks, 10 parks were to be closed and 130 fulltime and seasonal
positions cut.

As many of you
found out (perhaps the hard way) this impacted the windsurfing and
kitesurfing community with access restricted to both Sandbanks beach
as well as Outlet beach in the form of a locked gate as
of Oct
8th last year- right about the time the best of the
world class windy season started at Sandbanks.

The short of it -
we managed to convince the park to install a secondary gate that
will allow us access to the beach until December but we need your
help raising funds to support the costs.

We need the
support of the wind community and ask that you please donate what
you can to help with this initiative!

Fundraising
Target: $5,000

Amount Raisted to Date:
$1,700

Full story
and progress to Date

A small number of
windsurfers and kitesurfers took on the task of gathering feedback
from the windsurfing and kitesurfing communities, drafting proposals
and contacting and working with the park to see what could be done.
Thanks to efforts of this group (and in particular to Ilan Artzy
from Montreal who met several times with the Friends of Sandbanks
(http://friendsofsandbanks.org/site/home/)
as well as the Superintendant and assistant superintendant of the
park!) there are improvements to access that are being
implemented:

The park has
agreed to make changes to the park that will benefit the windsurfing
and kitesurfing community:

A new gate has
now been installed (see picture below) to allow
windsurfers/kitesurfers to access Outlet beach after the official
closing of the park (Thanksgiving). The gate will remain open
until December.

The walking path
to Sandbanks beach has already been enlarged and improved in order
to provide better off-season access (after Thanksgiving)

The gate to Sandbanks beach, which
was closed in early September last year, will now be opened until
Thanksgiving

As well, we are currently discussing with the Parc the
possibility of improving and enlarging the walking path near the new
gate.

How you can
help

Of course there is
a cost to implementing these changes for the benefit of our
communities and with a fixed budget and ever-increasing costs the
park can only afford to make a certain amount of improvements. The
park is picking up the tab for the improved access path to Sandbanks
beach and the Friends of Sandbanks has agreed to provide the
up-front funds with the understanding that we would launch a
fundraising campaign to raise money to support the park that many of
us visit for an amazing session on the water as often as
possible.

Here’s where your
support is essential. We’re asking the windsurfing and kitesurfing
community to donate to this cause to both help fund the cost of
changes that are being implemented for our benefit as well as show
our support for the Friends of Sandbanks, that without their support
for our proposals as well as up-front funding, we might not have
been able to get approval for a new gate.

For your
convenience, a Paypal account has been set up to gather donations
from the community, which will be provided directly to the Friends
of Sandbanks. Our target is to raise $5000 for Friends of Sandbanks.
While there is no time limit on donations, please try and make your
donation within the next three weeks so that the donations can be
provided to Friends of Sandbanks as soon as possible :

If you prefer to
make your donation directly to the Friends of Sandbanks, you can
mail in a cheque to the address below. PLEASE – make note on the
cheque that you are a windsurfer/kitesurfer submitting a donation to
help with access improvements to the park so that Friends of
Sandbanks will know how much the communities have donated. I’m sure
they will also let the park know.

Friends of
Sandbanks

PO Box 22007, 97
Main St

Picton, ON K0K
0A0

July 25

The following document that outlines the Ottawa Windsurfing
community's concerns with the draft proposal on the redevelopment of
the Ron Kolbus Lakeside Gardens facility and Britannia Park was
developed through the Ottawa Windsurfing discussion group and is
supported by the windsurfing community. Besides addressing the
proposed redevelopment this document has an annex which describes
the history of windsurfing in Ottawa which you may find interesting.
Do you know who is the most famous windsurfer from this area?

The document has been submitted to Councillor Mark Taylor who is
putting forward the development plan and we encourage the
windsurfing community to contact the councillor for their ward to
raise this issue. Its available in two formats:

We are working on preparing a
windsurfing community response on how this will significantly impact
the windsurfing community which will be provided to the
councillor. If you have any suggestions to add, please email them
directly to me at slaby@magma.ca

May
10

For a complete list of windsurfing events for 2012 please consult the
following page: